As our bonds to the planet’s web of life are strained and broken by exploitation and neglect, The Cherokee Natural World provides a different vision of our place in the world, one rooted in harmonious relationships that are crucial to our future.

This remarkable, visually stunning digital publication offers the largest collection of terms, stories, and reflections ever gathered together in one place from knowledge keepers of the Cherokee People, the second-largest Indigenous nation in the United States.

At the heart of this project is an archive of Cherokee names and teachings that refer to more than six hundred living elements of the natural world, from birds and reptiles to trees and clouds, each with its own striking illustration. Here, the visitor will find not only clear, engaging writings, but also audio and video that offer pronunciation guidance from community elders and first-language speakers, as well as testimonies and conversations that illuminate the unique role and significance of each creature and its kinship with others. Together, they promote an understanding of the natural world in which body, mind, and spirit coexist in life-giving balance.

Painting depicting the Cherokee cosmos by Cherokee artist MaryBeth Timothy.

Divided into the three traditional realms of the Cherokee cosmos – Sky World, Middle World, and Under World – this active archive is the latest embodiment of the work of distinguished Cherokee elder Hastings Shade, carried out and extended in collaboration with his spouse, Loretta Shade, son Larry Shade, and scholar Christopher B. Teuton. For thirty years, Hastings Shade collected names, explanations, and anecdotes from elders and prominent knowledge keepers, in part to preserve the vocabulary and traditional concepts of a nation with over three hundred thousand citizens but little more than three thousand first-language speakers.   

The Cherokee Natural World is, however, no mere inventory of cultural knowledge. By its very design, the publication is relational in nature, allowing each visitor to follow their own path from one aspect of this cosmos to another through links that contextualize the knowledge in diverse patterns. Dozens of audio and video recordings of well-known Cherokee storytellers sharing oral traditional stories provide opportunities for personal reflection, demonstrating the ways Cherokee values and cultural teachings continue to be passed down. In this way, it reflects the principle of intrinsic interdependence at the heart of Cherokee life.

Unprecedented in scope, consistently accessible, and enhanced throughout by luminous imagery from Cherokee artist MaryBeth Timothy, The Cherokee Natural World provides an invaluable resource for scholars in the fields of Indigenous studies and language reclamation. More importantly, it is sure to become a touchstone for generations of Cherokee people seeking to restore connection to their language and traditions, returning these fully to everyday use, and allowing them to convey wisdom more urgently relevant, and needed, than ever.

HASTINGS SHADE (1941-2010) was Deputy Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation from 1999 to 2003 and named a Cherokee National Treasure in 1991. 

CHRISTOPHER B. TEUTON (Cherokee Nation) is Professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Washington. He is the author of Cherokee Stories of the Turtle Island Liars’ Club and co-author of Cherokee Earth Dwellers: Stories and Teachings of the Natural World. 

LORETTA SHADE (1946-2021) was a master-level speaker of the Cherokee language and named a Cherokee National Treasure in 2018. 

LARRY SHADE (Cherokee Nation) is an educator, coach, and cultural traditionalist known for carrying on his family’s tradition of storytelling and gig making. 

MARYBETH TIMOTHY (Cherokee Nation) is an accomplished artist and illustrator noted for depictions of Native life and the natural world.

THOMAS N. BELT (Cherokee Nation) is a fluent Cherokee speaker and award-winning scholar and teacher of Cherokee language.

Reviews

“This is an exciting and important digital work! Because we can easily navigate back and forth across thematically linked sections, there’s no single way to read or learn. The digital structure promotes a reading experience that is guided by each visitor’s unique curiosities and interests, in a non-linear path that feels true to the materials presented and preserved in the collection.”

Allison Margaret Bigelow, Tom Scully Discovery Chair and Associate Professor, Latin American Studies, University of Virginia

“I am just so impressed with this initiative! I love that there is a mix of stories, myth, language, and vocabulary. The digital publication specifically brings these elders to life with nearly tactile presentations of culture, pictures of plants and animals, art, and oral stories. It’s one thing to read the stories, but it’s another thing to hear them. I personally found the recorded storytellers, their emphasis, their pauses, significantly impactful.” 

Suncerae Smith, PhD, Cherokee Nation citizen, editor at Rust+Moth

“In this cosmos, the Indigenous language plays a central role in helping people to see the world around them. My great grandfather spoke only Cherokee and he could tell about the world in our language with the names of everything in the natural world. My grandfather could speak very little Cherokee, but he could still tell us about the names of the tree, plants, and animals in the natural world. My father knew no Cherokee at all but he could still name the things in English. But now, myself and my son, we cannot speak of all these things in English or Cherokee. We don’t know the names of the trees or even all the plants and animals. This presentation of the natural world combined with the language can help us recover what was lost!” 

Billy Shotpouch, Cherokee Nation citizen

“Whether used as a reference for learning the Cherokee language, read as a cultural history or personal narrative, or regarded as a record and archive persisting or resurging the Cherokee language among first-language speakers, The Cherokee Natural World is very much about listening. The RavenSpace platform parallels concepts of story-telling and story-hearing by offering audiences a prominent role in how they experience the stories and knowledge presented here. The open navigation places the reader ‘at the center’ of the network and makes the experience of learning and reading one reflective of the Cherokee concept of gadogv.” 

Jasmine Mulliken, Production and Preservation Manager, Digital Projects, Stanford University Press

Credits and Acknowledgements  

UBC Press acknowledges the generous financial support from the Mellon Foundation, which has made RavenSpace possible.This book is freely available in an open access edition with funds received from the 2024 Arcadia Open Access Publishing Award, granted to RavenSpace Publishing at UBC Press by the American Council of Learned Societies with generous support from Arcadia.

This publication has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Democracy demands wisdom. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this web publication do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. 

The RavenSpace digital publication The Cherokee Natural World is adapted and expanded from the print publication Cherokee Earth Dwellers (published by the University of Washington Press and UBC Press, 2023).